INDUSTRIES 



Another Southwark brewhouse was the 

 ' Moon,' in the parish of St. George. This, 

 we are told, was leased for a term of forty 

 years from Easter, 1436, to John Stanley, a 

 citizen and brewer of London, at an annual 

 rent of ^^3 6s. id} Stanley being thus seised 

 of the tenement ' with certyn ledus and 

 brewyng vessell in the same' sublet from 

 Easter, 1440, to Thomas Muddle of South- 

 wark, brewer, and Felicia his wife at a rent 

 of j^5 i6f. Sd. with certain conditions in the 

 event of the new tenants being distrained for 

 the original rent payable to the owner. This 

 event actually happening, the necessity of 

 exacting the fulfilment of these conditions 

 gives occasion to yet another Chancery suit. 



One last reference to Southwark brewing 

 in these fifteenth century proceedings must 

 sufEce. It gives us information in regard to 

 another point in connection with the industry, 

 for we learn that Robert Trott, a Southwark 

 brewer, had been in the habit for many years 

 of buying malt every week from a maltman 

 of Enfield in Middlesex.* A debt of 

 £i 13J. lod. on certain quantities of the 

 malt thus purchased had been allowed to 

 accumulate, and the maltman had failed 

 altogether to recover this amount at several 

 actions at common law which he had 

 taken both within and without the 

 Borough, owing to the brewer, 'like an 

 unjust man and evil disposed,' having 

 offered to wage his law to all these actions. 

 And yet it is stated ' the said Robert is a man 

 of great possessions and may pay the said 

 ;^8 ly. lod. with his ease and little grieve 

 him or nought.' Thus even at this early 

 period brewing in a populous town could be 

 made the road to wealth. 



But we may now pass from these some- 

 what scattered notices of the early history of 

 ale-brewing in Surrey to the time when the 

 general introduction of the use of hops created 

 a revolution in the art of manufacture of the 

 national drink. An exact year has been fixed 

 for this innovation, 1524, and Howes tells us 

 that the well-known doggerel rhyme — 



Turkeys, carpes, hops ; Piccarels, and beere, 

 Came into England : all in one yeere, 



was a long time current. It is certain how- 

 to make over the tenement to her son's only 

 daughter Joan. Joan had died unmarried during 

 her father's lifetime, and it does not appear to be 

 disputed that by some means or other John Browne 

 had enjoyed occupation of the house for some six 

 years immediately previous to his death. 



1 Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 1 1, No. 299. 



2 Ibid. bdle. 60, No. 97. 



ever that the use of hops was known in Eng- 

 land long before the year 1524, though it 

 may have been confined to the foreign brewers 

 who began to establish themselves in the 

 country during the fifteenth century. What- 

 ever may now be the exact distinction in the 

 terms ale and beer, the popular application of 

 which seems to vary in different districts of 

 the country, there was no doubt at all about 

 the difference in the two beverages which 

 went under these names in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. Ale is defined in the 

 Promptor'tum Parvulorum, compiled about the 

 year 1440, as 'cervisia,' and it is added ' et 

 hie nota bene quod est potus Anglorum,' 

 whilst beer (here) is 'cervisia hummulina,' 

 that is hopped, and hops (hoppe) are *sede 

 for beyre.' ^ Foreign brewers of beer are 

 first supposed to have settled themselves in 

 London, and in the assessment there for the 

 alien subsidy levied in 1483 eight Germans 

 are returned as brewers.* But we need not 

 travel outside our own county to find still 

 earlier evidence of the existence of a foreign 

 brewing industry in this country. Indeed one 

 of the very first notices of the presence of 

 foreign brewers in England seems to belong 

 to Southwark. In 1437 the Commons com- 

 plained of two great nuisances to the realm 

 occasioned by the large number of aliens then 

 residing in the Borough. One of these 

 nuisances was the stews then farmed by ' froes 

 of Flanders.' The other was the number of 

 common taverns kept by Flemings, where 

 aliens of all nations were wont to congregate 

 and by rigidly excluding all natives could 

 hatch all sort of mischief to the king and his 

 people.^ That Englishmen did not resort to 

 such taverns strengthens the argument that 

 there was no consumption of the foreign 

 beverage amongst them at this period. We 

 learn more definitely that ' beer ' was actually 

 brewed by foreigners in Southwark a little 

 later in 1440 when Jose van Rixson a 

 ' byre-brewer ' with two foreign servants and 

 Downe Walters, also a ' birebrewer,' with 

 three foreign servants were amongst the aliens 

 then taxed in the Borough. Two other 

 aliens, in the same place, John Hull and 

 Thomas Brewer are described simply as 

 brewers.' There were no foreign brewers 

 elsewhere in Surrey at this date. 



Not until a hundred years after this do we 



3 Promptor'tum Parvulorum (ed. Camden Soc), 

 245, note I. 



* Lay Subs, ccxlii. No. 25. 



5 Rot. Pari. iv. 511a. These taverns appear at 

 this date to have been a recent innovation. 



" Lay Subs, clxxxiv. No. 212. 



381 



